Alonso reckons 2014 cars too slow

Alonso, who finished the opening two races in fourth places, believes that the slower lap times compared to recent seasons have removed some of the thrill for drivers.

"It is still exciting because at the end of the day you are competing against the others," he said. "That is the DNA of the driver, the competition. If we drive go-karts, we enjoy so much and we are driving at 50km/h with very hard tyres and sliding everywhere and we keep enjoying that race. So it is not a problem of excitement. It is just that the cars are too slow.

"The fastest lap in Malaysia was 1m34.8s with Vettel some years ago, and Hamilton did a 1m43.0s , so that's nine seconds. And behind the wheel, when you drive nine seconds slower, you don't enjoy as much as driving the fast car. As far as it is the same for everybody, and you compete against the others, you keep enjoying. But for drivers like me or Kimi [Raikkonen] or Jenson [Button] who drove another Formula 1, it is not better or worse, but you will miss some of those cars."

Alonso is unconvinced that any tweaks to the formula will produce better racing and compared the sport to football.

"If they allowed some more fuel in the cars that are fast, they will be even faster," he added. "And the cars that are slow will be a little bit less slow. It's not that we will see the Marussia or the Caterham winning the race. We need to try to do a better show, but we need to think in which way. We need to give a little bit more time also to the races because we only had two.

"There is a long way to go. There will be some exciting races. There will be some boring races, like in football. Some matches you see 0-0 and it's a terrible match and then the next week you see 5-4 and you enjoy so much the game."

Despite a quiet start for Ferrari, Alonso remains confident that he will still be in the hunt for the world championship in Abu Dhabi.

"It is a very young car," he said. "All the things we find on the wind tunnel or the power area are not steps we used to see in the last years, half a tenth, half a tenth. Now you see a couple of tenths in any step. So there is very good room to improve in all areas, to become more competitive.

"At the same time, it is the same for everybody so we just need to be a little more clever than the other teams and find this little extra. Unfortunately we start with a deficit so we need to close this gap but the potential is there and there is no question that we think that in Abu Dhabi we will be in the fight. That's for sure."